Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014)

By Reem Gerais
Published: 2017-02-26
Keywords:

Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014)

In the 2014 case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the US Supreme Court ruled
that the contraceptive mandate promulgated under the Patient Protection
and Affordable Care Act violated privately held, for-profit
corporations’ right to religious freedom. In 2012, the US Department of Health and Human Services
issued the contraception mandate, which
required that employer-provided health insurance plans offer their
beneficiaries certain contraceptive methods free of charge. In a five
to four decision, the US Supreme Court maintained that the mandate, in
cases of privately held, for-profit organizations like Hobby Lobby Inc.,
violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. Although the
Court did not decide on the constitutionality of the mandate, their
ruling enabled privately held, for-profit corporations that objected to
the contraceptive mandate on religious grounds to be exempt from it.

On 23 March 2010, US President Barack Obama signed the Patient
Protection and the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, into law. The ACA was a
legislative overhaul of the US healthcare system that sought to minimize
the number of uninsured US citizens. Many of the ACA’s reforms were
directed towards healthcare insurers and mandated which services they
were required to cover. The ACA included a provision requiring
employer-sponsored health insurance plans to cover certain preventative health
services at no cost to the individual. In the provision,
the ACA granted the US Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS,
in Washington, D.C., authority to determine which preventive services
health insurance plans must cover.

On 15 February 2012, the HHS, the US
Department of Labor, and the US Department of Treasury finalized
regulations that detailed which preventative health services insurers had to cover.
Insurance plans had to cover all contraceptive methods approved by the
Federal Food and Drug Administration, or FDA. According to the mandate,
all employer-sponsored health care plans had to
cover fourteen methods of contraception, free of
cost to all female enrollees. Starting in 2014, all companies who failed
to offer their employees health care plans that met all aspects of the
ACA, including the contraceptive mandate, where charged a daily
one-hundred-dollar tax penalty for each affected employee. If a
corporation instead chose not to offer any healthcare plans to
employees, the corporation was charged a 2,000 dollar fine each year for each
employee it failed to insure. However, the HHS regulations included
exceptions for certain corporations. Under the HHS regulations,
non-profit religious organizations, such as religiously-affiliated
hospitals, were not required to meet the contraceptive mandate.

On 12 September 2012, Barbara and David Green, along with their
children Mart Green, Steven Green, and Darsee Lett, filed a lawsuit in
the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma in Oklahoma
City, Oklahoma, on behalf of their family-owned company, Hobby Lobby
Stores Inc. The Hobby Lobby Corporation included over 500 stores that
sold arts and crafts supplies throughout the United States. According to
Green, the founder and CEO of Hobby Lobby, all of the stores that he had
founded, including the first store opened in 1976, incorporated his
Christian beliefs into their everyday functions. In 2012, Green and his
son Steven, who was the president of the company, maintained
ownership of all of the Hobby Lobby stores.

The Greens filed their suit
against the director of Health and Human Services, or HHS, Kathleen
Sibelius, and challenged the HHS contraceptive mandate of the Affordable
Care Act. The Greens argued that the contraceptive mandate of the ACA
violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, or RFRA, and the
Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. The
RFRA prohibited the national government from substantially burdening
individuals exercising their religious beliefs. The RFRA stipulated that
the government can only burden one’s religious exercise if the government’s
actions meet two requirements.

First, the government’s actions
must advance a compelling government interest. Specially, the US
government has an obligation to promote the general interest of its
citizens. In the case of the ACA and the contraceptive mandate, the HHS
argued that the mandate aimed to promote and protect the health of its
citizens by offering women all FDA-approved contraceptive methods.
Second, the government’s actions must achieve that compelling interest
in the least restrictive means possible. Though the government has a duty to
promote the general interest of the public population, RFRA limits the
scope of that power by requiring government interests to be advanced in
a manner that limits the burden those actions place on religious
freedoms.

According to the Greens, the contraceptive mandate
interfered with their corporation’s right to exercise their religious
beliefs by forcing their employer-provided health plans to cover four
FDA-approved contraceptive methods that they considered to induce
abortions. The four contraceptive methods challenged by the Greens
included two emergency contraceptive pills, Plan B and Ella, and two
intrauterine devices, ParaGrad and Mirena. The Greens argued that under
their religious beliefs, life begins when an egg is fertilized and that
emergency contraceptive pills and intrauterine devices both have the
potential to prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus. The
Greens argued that those methods induced abortions by terminating
fertilized eggs, which the Greens objected to on religious grounds. The
Greens claimed that being mandated to cover those contraceptive methods
violated their rights to exercise their religious freedoms enumerated in
the First Amendment to the US Constitution and protected by the RFRA.

In response to the Greens’ arguments, the HHS contested Hobby
Lobby’s ability to make claims under the RFRA. The HHS argued that the
RFRA, as drafted by US Congress, protected only an individual’s right to
freedom of religion. A for-profit corporation, the HHS claimed, did not
constitute an individual. According to the HHS, Hobby Lobby was a
company composed of individuals with many different beliefs. The HHS
argued that Hobby Lobby could not claim that the contraceptive mandate
burdened the corporation’s religious beliefs, as they were a
non-religious corporation comprised of individuals capable of exercising
their personal religious beliefs.

During the initial stages of
the case, the Greens and Hobby Lobby sought a preliminary injunction
that would require the HHS to cease enforcement of the contraception
mandate to the involved parties for the duration of the trial. With a
preliminary injunction, Hobby Lobby would not be charged any tax
penalties for failing to meet the contraception mandate of the ACA until
the case was decided. In November 2012, however, the judge who heard the
case, Joe Heaton, denied Hobby Lobby’s request for a preliminary
injunction. According to Heaton, for-profit organizations, such as Hobby
Lobby Inc., are not religiously affiliated and therefore cannot claim
rights to religious freedom.

In December 2012, Hobby Lobby
appealed Heaton’s decision to the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth
Circuit in Denver, Colorado. The Tenth Circuit Court disagreed with the
district court’s decision, stating that for-profit organizations could
claim rights to religious freedom and that Hobby Lobby had standing to
sue the HHS. On 27 June 2013, the Tenth Circuit reversed the district
court’s initial denial of injunction. The appeals court sent the case
back to Heaton who granted Hobby Lobby’s request for an injunction on 19
July 2013. That meant that employee health care plans offered by Hobby
Lobby Inc. would not be required to meet the contraceptive mandate and
that the tax penalties associated with the ACA would not apply to Hobby
Lobby for the duration of the trial.

Soon after, the US federal
government, disagreeing with the lower court’s decision, petitioned the
US Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., for a review of the Tenth Circuit
Court’s decision. The US Supreme Court granted the request for review on
26 November 2013. The US Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and
consolidated Hobby Lobby with a similar case, in which Conestoga Wood
Specialties, a for-profit corporation from Pennsylvania, challenged the
contraceptive mandate of the ACA on similar grounds. On 25 March 2014,
the US Supreme Court began to hear arguments for the case. On 10 April
2014, the Secretary for the HHS, Sebelius, resigned. Appointed as the
new head of the HHS, Sylvia Burwell inherited the case on behalf of the
department. The case was then renamed Burwell v. Hobby Lobby.

On 30 June 2014, the US Supreme Court decided Burwell v. Hobby
Lobby. The Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 in favor of Hobby Lobby. Five
Justices, Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy,
and Clarence Thomas, joined the majority opinion authored by Alito. In that
opinion, Alito argued that the contraceptive mandate of the ACA placed a
burden on the exercise of religion of Hobby Lobby, a corporation that
indeed counted as an individual with the ability to practice religion.
Hobby Lobby, Alito argues, was protected under RFRA. The ACA, Alito
argued, violated Hobby Lobby’s rights under RFRA by compelling Hobby
Lobby to provide certain contraception methods that burdened the
corporation’s religious beliefs, but failed to do so in the least
restrictive manner.

The US Supreme Court’s ruling determined a
for-profit corporation’s ability to be classified as a person under the
RFRA. The HHS argued that the regulations established by the
contraceptive mandate applied only to the corporations themselves and so
could not burden individuals managing the companies. Due to that, the
Department claimed that the contraceptive mandate did not burden the
religious views of the Greens and only established requirements for
Hobby Lobby Inc., a corporation incapable of holding religious views
under the RFRA. Five of the nine justices of the Supreme Court, on the
other hand, held that the definition of persons included corporations
and therefore Hobby Lobby could make free-exercise claims under the
RFRA. According to the majority ruling, authored by Justice Alito, the
Affordable Care Act did not specify what would and would not be
considered a person. The majority relied on the dictionary definition of
person, which they argued, included corporations and thus Hobby Lobby’s
exercise of religion could be infringed on under the RFRA.

The
contraceptive mandate, Hobby Lobby argued, forced Hobby Lobby and other
religiously affiliated corporations to choose between violating their
religious principles and paying burdensome penalties for failing to meet
the requirements of the mandate. Ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby, the
court concluded that the burden placed on each corporation was
substantial.

Under the RFRA, government actions can only burden
a person’s right to practice religion when the action promotes a
substantial government interest and is the least restrictive way of
accomplishing the governments intended goal. The Court, ruling partially
in favor of the HHS, agreed that the contraceptive mandate promoted the
significant government interest of promoting the health of its citizens.
According to the HHS and Alito, author of the majority opinion, the
government had a compelling interest in guaranteeing women have
cost-free access to all FDA approved contraceptive methods.

Although the majority of justices agreed with the Department that
the contraceptive mandate fostered a government interest, the five
justices ultimately concluded that the government failed to accomplish
their intended interest in the least restrictive manner. According to
Alito, the government could have proposed other means of guaranteeing
women access to the four debated methods of contraception without
requiring employers to provide them through employee health plans.

Four Justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer,
and Elena Kagan, joined the dissenting opinion authored by Ginsburg. In
the dissenting opinion, Ginsburg argued that the ACA’s contraceptive
mandate exemplified the least restrictive way the government could
ensure that women had access to necessary contraception. According to
Ginsburg, research conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, headquartered
in New York City, New York, and Washington, D.C., predicted that the
contraceptive method would reduce unintended pregnancies and abortions
in the US. The exemption for for-profit organizations, Ginsburg argued,
prevented women from receiving contraceptive care and jeopardized the
overall health and well being of women working for those corporations.
In a 5 to 4 ruling, the Court concluded that the contraceptive mandate
of the ACA violated RFRA, meaning the government had to offer exemptions
to religious for-profit corporations that claimed the contraceptive
mandate burdened their religious beliefs.

Organizations opposed
to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby argued that
the consequences of the case would continue beyond the contraceptive
mandate of the ACA. According to Adam Sonfield, a publisher for the
American Medical Association’s Journal of Ethics, the religious
exemptions could potentially be applied to prevent organizations from
providing necessary coverage for numerous other health care services.
Supporters of the majority court’s decision, such as the Becket Fund, a
Washington, D.C., law firm that protects religious freedom in the US,
argued that Burwell v. Hobby Lobby exemplified a victory for
religiously affiliated organizations. According to the Becket Fund, the
court’s decision protected the constitutional right of corporations to
exercise their religious freedom.